Rinehart Stone House Museum

08/27/2026

08/20/2026

50 years ago in 1976 we were celebrating our Nation’s 200 year Bicentennial 🇺🇸🤠

This year in 2026 we celebrate our Nation’s 250th Semiquincentennial 🇺🇸🤩

We recently received a donated copy of “200 Years in the Making” Bicentennial Edition. Highlighting Malheur, Payette, Washington, Owyhee, and Baker County History in Oregon and Idaho.

The book has wonderful history accounts from local pioneers and historians as well as local advertisements from 50 years ago.

In this article Vale’s Oregon Trail interpretive site was just getting started. BLM and OCTA future plans include restoration of the site as it’s still a popular place for visitors even today in search of the National Historic Oregon Trail.

Keeney Pass links:

https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/walk-on-the-oregon-trail.htm

https://www.nps.gov/places/000/keeney-pass-interpretive-site.htm

08/19/2026

08/19/2026

08/19/2026

08/11/2026

An exciting day today when a visitor stopped by and together we discovered how it’s entirely possible to use old family photographs to research genealogy via a google image search.

It took a little bit of prompting the initial search with some key basics such as a family name and general location. Just enough to correct it from thinking this was Charles Ingall from Little House on the Prairie.

Unraveling histories mysteries and connecting to the past here on the Oregon Trail.

Footnote:

This historic artifact is a crayon portrait (also known as an enlarged solar print or a charcoal portrait), which is a unique hybrid of photography and hand-drawn art popular from the 1860s through the early 1900s.

The Process: A photographer used a solar camera to project a faint, enlarged image of a small original photograph (like a tintype or carte-de-visite) onto a large sheet of paper sensitized with silver salts.

The Artistry: Because early photographic enlargements were grainy, blurry, and easily faded, an artist would completely draw over the faint photographic base using charcoal, pastel, watercolor, or wax crayons.

Visual Identifiers: You can identify it by the striking contrast between the soft, airbrushed look of the clothing and the highly detailed, hand-drawn facial details (like the eyes and hair), giving it the combined look of a photograph and a painting.

The Frame: These were traditionally framed behind curved convex glass inside large oval or rectangular wooden frames, serving as cherished family heirlooms.

08/04/2026